


Savage Alliances

by FilmFreak94



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, Spy - Freeform, spy AU, zootopia au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FilmFreak94/pseuds/FilmFreak94
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An average ex-con is pulled back to his roots for one last job. A job that thrusts him into a series of impossibilities; an assassination he wasn't supposed to see, a plot he wasn't supposed to uncover, a childhood dream he was supposed to have nipped in the bud, and a bunny he was supposed to despise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jack Savage took a moment to admire himself in the mirror. His physique was without peer, especially considering the average, vegetable-farming bunny commonly, and wrongly, associated with his species. The suit he wore gave him a unique edge as well, a black tuxedo and dress pants, complimented by a dash of color in the ruby-red tie he loosened slightly around his neck. Never too tight, never too loose, the way he liked it.

You could never forget a face like Jack’s. Youthful and beaming in an overabundance of smug self-confidence (though not without good reason given his reputation), and distinct black stripes marking his face and ears extending to a large black spot on the back of his head and ears, contrasting his equally distinct silver fur. The teal coloring in his eyes only completed the package. A package every woman, friend or foe, was eager to open.

Such a woman was waiting for him now in the other room, sprawled out on the bed eager for his embrace. She was a fairly pretty bunny by their standards, he supposed (he couldn’t say he had much interest in them himself), wearing a silk nightgown and holding a glass of champagne in her paw. No one watching could blame Jack for being a little sidetracked with her, but he was a man of business first. Stepping out of the bathroom and being greeted by this lovely image he gave the bunny a smile that dripped from his lips like honey from a comb, walking to the glass round table where they had left the bottle of champagne (‘62 White Chardonnay, excellent year as he would later discover) and his phone.

“Jacky…” The woman sang in a voice that was not quite desperate but not quite indifferent either. She wanted him. Jack tilted his head to look at her from the corner of his eye, his back still turned to her. Always leave them wanting more.

“Jacky,” she repeated, “come back to bed.” He turned to her now, an attractive smile still on his lips. He put a paw to her cheek and gently guided her head downwards, to leave a small but lingering kiss on the top of her head in the space between her long ears.

“I’m afraid it’s not to be, my dear.” He put the phone in the empty pocket of a holster tied around his undershirt, its brother concealing a much more useful item he would no doubt have to use at least once before it was all said and done. He was at the door as his companion made her disappointment vocal.

“What could be more important than me?” She crawled backwards onto the bed so that only her enormous feet were hanging off the edge of it. Jack looked back at her as he let the door hang ajar. No doubt there was a part of him that so desperately wanted to escape into the sheets and do what came natural to them (whatever that was supposed to be). Alas, there were more important matters to attend to.

“I’m not sure you’d believe me if I said.” He settled on an aloof response.

“Try me.” She beckoned to him with a finger, eliciting a warm laugh from the hare.

“Later, perhaps.” With a wink he stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him.

The bunny was on her feet the moment she heard the door click, placing the wine on the drawer near the side of the bed and dialing a number on the hotel phone. She only had to wait a moment before someone answered.

“Yes?”

“He just left.”

_That can’t be good…_

 

Jack shook the temptation off of him as he made his way down the hall and to the elevator, slipping between an elephant and a bear like a glove between two heavy duty garbage bags.

“Ground floor?” The operator, a zebra wearing a layer of hideous red leather the management called a uniform, asked. He gave a single nod and the operator pressed the last button at the very bottom of the long panel that stretched a considerable distance on the lower right of the elevator corner. They closed with some audible effort, the hotel’s age playing a factor to it, and in another instant the hare was at the heart of the casino that made the lower floors of the Hotel Royale (a very stock name for such establishments but he supposed he couldn’t think of anything better were he in charge of a hotel).

Jack stepped out of the hotel with a swagger in his step that could, and did, turn the heads of many a patron. Of course he took care not to turn too many heads, that was never good for business, just the few that mattered (like that group of antelope bridesmaids who were thrown into a fit of giggles once he gave them his signature wink).

“What’s our status?” He spoke to himself in a voice so low not even the mammals passing him by could hear him. There was at least one in the casino who could, however.

“He’s playing Craps at table seven,” an electronic voice in his ear replied, “and not doing very well at it.”

“Our friend never did have the best of luck.” Jack remarked, taking a long detour to the Craps tables. He could see the target from a distance, a red fox named Charles Renard wearing a pearl-white tux, two minxes draped around his shoulders (they’d be long gone by the end of the night if his game continued the way it did). He was not a hard fox to miss, the eyepatch he wore over his left eye that couldn’t quite conceal the horrible scar underneath it a dead giveaway (adding to the fact that it was Jack who gave him the scar to begin with).

The hare stopped near a slot machine to observe his old foe. Charlie’s temper had always gotten the better of him, and every bad roll of the dice sent his dagger-like teeth on edge, his eyes dilated and shifting around the table to the other players, ready to attack any one of them at the slightest provocation. The other players were at least three times his size so violence wasn’t a top concern to him this evening, but still he could tell he wouldn’t be coming in easily (as if he ever did).

“Extraction team ready?” Jack whispered into a glass of wine he snatched from a hostess’s tray.

“Prepped and at the rendezvous.” The voice responded, Jack locating its source about twenty feet from table seven, lighting what must have been his third cigarette this evening and making a rookie mistake as he spoke.

“Don’t touch your ear, Wilson.” Jack reprimanded the leopard.

“Easy for you to say, Savage. Your ears were made for these blasted things.” He chuckled as he savored the wine, making small circles with the glass to give it a more proper mixing. There was a part of him that wished he could watch Renard squirm the rest of the night, with each roll sending him further and further down the sinkhole, but something felt off about it.

 “I thought you said Renard knew we were onto him.”

“Yeah, that’s what our informant told us, why?”

“Seems to me like he’s spending a little too much time playing with dice, don’t you think?”

“I suppose. Maybe he’s just trying to play it casual.” Wilson spoke into the puff of smoke he exhaled.

“Maybe. Or maybe…” Jack’s voice trailed into a whisper that even Wilson couldn’t hear.

“Maybe what?” He asked to radio silence. “Savage, maybe what? Savage!” He lowered his voice after receiving an inquisitive glance from a lioness. “Savage,” he hissed, “come in dam-SAVAGE!” Wilson was surprised he was able to restrain his voice to nothing but a violent murmur as Jack approached table seven, taking the free space opposite of Renard’s.

“Mind if I join in next round?” He asked the table, the fox at the other end donning a face that had seen the Devil walk the earth. Slowly his blood-red, bloodshot eye trailed from the board to the teal eyes of Jack Savage, who smiled and bowed his head to his adversary, turning his grimace to an unquestionably murderous scowl.

_Does he have a death wish?_

Renard’s focus fell back on the board, watching a lemur on one end of the table throw his dice. Two more players and a new round would begin. Jack caught the attention of a waitress, gently holding the doe’s leg so that she came to a stop and gesturing for her to lower her tray with his paw. “I’ll have a refill please, Cabernet Franc.” He released the doe who had to stifle the flush in her cheeks as she went to the bar.

“Your taste in drinks is exquisite, sir.” Renard said, finding a hint of amicability between his scowls.

“Among other things.” He smiled at the minxes who giggled in return.

The round ended a few minutes after the waitress had returned with his drink, the dealer paying the gentlemen and ladies around him (Renard ending up with one of the smaller takeaways) and Jack put out one hundred dollars on the table.

“That better not be company finances you’re wasting.” His ear groaned. He ignored it as the first player, a wombat in a cheap, Hawaiian shirt, began the round. He placed a few five-dollar chips on the line as some of the other players followed suit, Renard excluding himself from the bet (he probably couldn’t afford to make them idly at this point). The wombat rolled a four his first go, then a nine, then a six, a nine again, ten, one, and finally an eleven. It was three more players before Renard’s turn, who practically snatched the dice from the board when the dealer slid them over to him. A wicked grin fell on Jack’s face as he took a handful of five-dollar chips and placed them on the Don’t Pass Bar. Renard shot him a cold stare and the hare shrugged.

“No offense, mate, but your luck just doesn’t seem to be all there tonight.” The fox sniffed and took a few chips of his own, placing them on the Pass Line. He shook the dice with impressive fervor and threw them onto the table as though they were grenades, watching intently as they rolled and collided with the wall on Jack’s side, continuing his rotten streak.

“Ooooh, so sorry friend.” Jack offered his condolences when the dice had landed three. Renard opened his mouth to say something but shut it just as quickly. The fury bottled up within him reaching a boiling point. He shook it off as the dealer collected the dice and passed it on to the next player.

Jack made a few small bets here and there on the Pass Line or at one of the smaller numbers on the board, biding his time as Renard struggled to keep his composure. Although the fox was noticeably flustered from the whole ordeal there was still something uncharacteristic about him that Jack couldn’t quite put a finger on. He would steal glances at him every so often and smile whenever he would notice, shaking his head as he chuckling under his breath. Renard may have been one of the worst dice players he had ever met, but he was also a schemer. Something wasn’t right.

_I thought something more exciting was going to happen soon?_

_Shh!_

“Your roll, sir.” The dealer broke Jack out of his train of thought. The hare took the dice and shook them in his paw, feigning disinterest. This only made the reaction of the table when he rolled a seven all the more rewarding.

“Now that’s more like it.” A panda said as he placed a few more chips on the line.

“Don’t screw it up now, boy.” A vole, who had to stand on the table and use a special pair of dice whenever it was his turn to roll, said to him. Jack took the dice once more and repeated his ritual. Leaning over the table a bit so that his arm was about halfway between him and the fox.

“Would you do the honors, ladies?” The minxes were perhaps too eager to lean as far over the table as they could (without landing face first on the board) and blow into the hare’s open palm. With a wink he threw the dice, not even watching as they came to a stop and the table erupted in a rapturous cheer.

“Good show!” A horse slapped Jack on the back and the vole shook his little finger.

“I think I may buy that summer boat after all!” A sheep exclaimed. Jack made small talk with all of them, but kept his eyes on Renard, who, surprising and disappointingly enough, hadn’t reacted to his success at all.

“Perhaps I should have bet it all on you, Mr…”

“Fortune.” Jack answered, the high of his roll too much to give up the ghost just yet. “Good Fortune.” The fox gave a dry laugh.

“Well you know what they say about good fortune.” Jack furrowed his brow as the dice passed on to the vole, his eyes never leaving the fox even as he whispered something in the minx on his right arm’s ear. She left a few minutes later with the other minx, as the round was about to end. Jack’s nerves growing steadily more anxious as the fox’s angry stares and mumbled curses turned to stoic remarks and a grin he could barely contain at the corner of his lips.

“Wilson,” Jack held his paw over his mouth as he rubbed his nose, “see anything unusual?”

“Nothing yet. What was that cheering a few minutes ago, you win big?”

“A little.”

“Switch out the dice with loaded ones again?”

“Not this time.”

“Bull.”

“No, the dealer’s an Ox, actually.”

“Shut up.” He did, but only because there was only so long he could rub his nose without someone starting to notice. Renard had noticed, though he didn’t necessarily care if _he_ did. The animal behind the fox concerned him a bit more. A rhino, wearing a black suit that looked very much like his own blown to about ten times its girth. The rhino stared at him only a moment, but a moment was all Jack needed.

He looked around him and saw a tiger standing near the slot machines, staring at him intently. A grizzly bear was standing at one of the other tables, and a hyena was making his way behind Wilson, completely unawares. He had only a split second to react before the hyena pulled out a gun.

“WILSON BEHIND YOU!” He yelled as he ducked under the table. The tiger, rhino and bear all opened fire, sending the casino into a frenzy. The other players scattered into the fleeing crowd, some taking a few of their chips with them, Renard taking full advantage of the confusion to slip away. He might have been able to disappear entirely were it not for Jack being able to see through the bustling crowd of larger and smaller mammals from underneath the table, getting a few glimpses of Renard as he made his way to the service elevator.

“Wilson, Renard’s making a break for it, he’s heading your way!” Jack pulled out his gun from the holster, still waiting for a response from his partner. “Wilson, come in. Wilson!” Jack made sure the gun was loaded and cocked it, steadying his breathing before coming out from the table.

He made a few shots for the tiger, hitting him in both legs and sending the beast’s skull onto one of the slot machines, knocking him out instantly. The other two, joined by the hyena, were behind him, the rhino and hyena behind overturned tables and the bear taking position in the bar in the middle of the poker room.

He went through about two rounds firing blindly at them, unable to get a good shot for how they all paced their own rounds so that at least two of them were always shooting at him. He could see Wilson lying on the floor a few feet from where the hyena had taken cover, motionless.

“Agent down, I repeat, agent down. Requesting backup.” Jack’s voice was calm, even as the bullets whizzed by his ears. Another voice told him backup was on the way, but not soon enough.

Thinking fast he made a dash for the bar, leaping upwards and brining both his feet down on the bear’s head. It wasn’t enough to get him out of the game, unfortunately, and a brief struggle ensued. The benefit of being a hare or a bunny, he supposed, was that larger mammals could barely keep track of them in a close corridors fight, and Jack was able to avoid the bear’s frantic punches and grabs with ease, using his feet to get a few more kicks at the bear’s face. Quick as he was he was not fast enough to avoid one lucky punch that sent him flying to the other end of the bar, the bear quick to his feet and charging towards him. Jack’s eyes dashed upwards, noticing the decorative chandelier hanging over them. Taking out his gun he fired three shots upwards, unhinging the bolts and sending the chandelier down onto the bear’s head. It brought him down but it still wasn’t enough. He growled and struggled to get it off him, but Jack merely stood and dusted himself off, reloading the gun and making a casual stroll to his opponent.

“Oh, do shut up.” He hit the bear right between the eyes with the butt of the gun, sending stars into his eyes before they finally shut. Two down, two left.

_Oh yeah, ‘cause when I have a gun I’ll aim for a random object rather than the dangerous animal trying to kill me._

_Shhhhhhhhh!_

He jumped from the bar and made two more bounds to another table as the hyena and rhino shot at him. He fired a few rounds as well, his aim never being the best while mobile, yet he was still able to land a hit on the hyena’s dominant arm. He took cover behind the leg of one of the larger poker tables, meant for mammals more like his rhino acquaintance. He checked his barrel and at the spare bullets he kept in his pocket. His supply was running low, and the backup he’d called for were still several minutes away. He could hold them until then, but Renard would get away in the meantime. He needed to end it, and he needed to do it fast.

As bullets began to pass through the table leg at alarming speed he ran out a few feet away from the table and in one powerful bound landed on top of it, leaving him horribly exposed. Landing with a roll that got him back on his feet he dashed across the board, firing his gun at the rhino who was firing back rapidly. He could feel a bullet graze his shoulder and his leg but he pushed through, staggering the rhino with a shot to the hip. In one final, grand leap he hopped from the table and his dominant foot made impact with the wound on his foe’s hip. The rhino fell backwards, straight onto the hyena who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. The rhino grimaced in pain as his partner yelled fruitlessly for him to get off. Thinking fast he removed the tie around his neck, placing it around the rhino’s wrist and tying it to a nearby bannister. The poor beast didn’t struggle, his thoughts too preoccupied with his hip to protest.

_That puny thing’s never gonna hold him._

“Paramedics will be here momentarily.” Jack told him, not out of sympathy so much as a gloat. The hyena’s muzzle became buried under his accomplice as he screamed profanities at the hare. “Hold that thought, would you?” Jack held his paw up as he turned to attend to Wilson, rushing to his side.

“Wilson?” He asked, turning the leopard on his back, relieved to see him breathing.

“Ouch.” He said simply, getting a rare laugh out of his fellow agent.

“None the worse for wear, eh?”

“More or less. Remind me to thank Alice for forcing me into this intolerable menace later.” He was still bleeding, the hyena having shot him in the back at point-blank range, yet the damage would have been worse were he not wearing a bulletproof vest his wife insisted he wear every hour while on the job. “Get after the fox,” he told him, “I’ll stay here and… keep an eye on the others.” Jack nodded, propping Wilson on one of the tables and giving him a handkerchief to put at least some pressure on the wound, then he was off to the service elevator.

 

He burst through the doors and saw the elevator already in use, heading to the roof. Pocketing his gun, he didn’t break his stride as he ran through the next set of doors, and to the stairs that led the long way up sixty floors. Around the tenth floor he realized he was taking much too long and sidelined through the doors to the hall, pushing past a pair of beavers as he slid into the elevator and frantically began to press the “close doors” button. He had to jump to reach the button to the sixtieth floor, with no operator inside to do the job for him.

The elevator began its slow crawl upwards, Jack’s feet banging furiously on the ground in anticipation. “Come on, come on, come on,” he repeated. At least with all the noise downstairs all the other guests would be too terrified to request the— crap.

A button for the forty-seventh floor lit up, coinciding with a groan from Jack. He braced himself to make another dash for the stairs, thankful that the distance between there and the roof wasn’t as bad as it had been a few floors below. The elevator made a ringing sound as the doors opened, Jack running straight into the legs of a larger mammal in his haste.

“So sorry, in a bit of a hurry, must dash,” Jack would have said if he hadn’t recognized the animal he had collided with. Staring down at him was a large Kodiak bear. Unremarkable, compared to any other of his species at least, save for his natural teeth being replaced by a metallic jaw, which Jack had seen tear the flesh from many a mammal’s neck even long before the two of them properly met.

Jack would have said something in greeting (something of the snide variety no doubt) if the bear hadn’t grabbed him by the neck and thrown him across the hall, coming to rest after he hit a decorative vase. The hare had to pause to let the pain sink in, his back getting the worst of it. The bear wouldn’t give him very long to compose himself, already approaching him with a slow gait that shook the ground with every step he took.

“Nice to see you too, Maw.” Jack said. The hare had only just managed to get himself back on his feet and in a fighting stance when the bear, Maw, grabbed him by the ears. With a cold, vacant expression Maw slammed Jack’s face into the wall, proceeding to swing the hare by the ears until he landed hard onto the floor. His grip on the agent tightened as he kicked in the door of the room closest to them, throwing him onto a glass table and startling the two beavers in bed. Maw had to duck to step into the room, and only had to give the proper tenants a glare to get them to leave.

Every bit of Jack ached as he struggled to get up from the broken table, bits of blood soaking his fur and tux, getting a good nick across his cheek from the impact of the glass. He brushed some of the blood away, straightening the collar of his suit and running a paw over his ears to smooth them behind his head.

“All right,” he groaned as he cracked his neck, “play time’s over.” Maw grinned, bearing all his terrible teeth, as the couple ran out into the hall as fast as they could, shutting the door behind them.

_It’s a wonder how that bunny’s still alive._

_Huuuush!_

_I mean, he’s so small and that bear’s so huge. And those teeth… why does he have those teeth? Must be a dentist’s nightmare._

 

“Mom!” The young fox could no longer stand it. “I’m trying to watch!”

“What, I’m just saying it’s all pretty silly, don’t you think?” Mrs. Wilde said between her knitting.

“It’s cool!” Her son, Nicholas, was sitting so that his nose practically kissed the television screen.

“And violent. Oooh, I felt that.” She winced as Maw kicked Jack into a bureau. “Why doesn’t he just eat him?”

“What?” Nicholas asked without looking away from the action.

“He’s a bear, with nasty, big, pointy teeth. Why doesn’t he just eat the bunny? He doesn’t have to toss him around like a ragdoll.”

“He will after he beats him up first!”

“What, to tenderize him?”

“For revenge, for kicks, for… I don’t know!”

“All right, all right, don’t get so defensive.” Nicholas shook his head as his mother returned most of her focus to her knitting. She’d been half busy knitting a hand-made scarf to go with the Junior Ranger Scouts uniform she had yet to afford while half-watching the movie with her son, based off those books she’d bought him on a whim from the dollar store a few years ago.

Jack Savage, secret agent working for the government, the best of the best of his entire department. She could never get past the premise alone, herself, but she figured at the time she bought them they would be harmless stories for a boy like her son, who had so few imaginative outlets as it was where they lived. Had she known there had been this much violence, innuendos and general unsafe behavior and antics young children were bound to imitate she would have followed her first instinct and put the books back in the bin she’d found them in, but she’d made sure to have a long talk to Nicholas about the difference between fiction and reality and never to repeat the actions he read or saw Jack doing. He was a smart boy, and a saint compared to some of the other young kits in the neighborhood, so she concluded there was no foul in letting him keep the books or watch the few made-for-TV movies they’d actually made based off them. And after all, they centered around a bunny as a spy. How much farther from reality could they be?

To Nick, they might as well have been history books for how often he poured himself into them, memorizing every minute detail like it was part of a test he’d only just remembered to study the night before. Only ten books had been written by the original author, Hazel Adams, and Nick had read all ten of them at least twice in the two years he’d had them. From _Savage Seas_ to _Savage Skies_ , Nick Wilde knew every story by heart. It was only earlier that afternoon, however, that he discovered a few movies had been made based off of them.

As he and his mother were in the video store a few blocks down the road he saw one buried in the back of a shelf filled with obscure silent films and the lame romantic comedies his mother liked to watch. He’d raced up to her and practically begged on bended knee to rent it, to which she, warily after looking at the rating on the back of the box, accepted. The clerk had given her a look of befuddlement when between the latest romantic comedy and an animated movie about Robin Hood there was an obscure spy-action movie starring, of all animals, a rabbit (technically a hare, though no one but him seemed to care about that discrepancy). Nick hadn’t seen that look, nor would he care if it were addressed to him. He was bouncing in his seat the entire car ride home, movie in lap, and sped off like a shot to their apartment floor to pop it into the VHS player (his poor mom having to remind him they still had plenty of groceries to bring up besides).

It had only been about ten minutes into the film so far and already he was enraptured in it. Recognizing the characters and a few of the plot points from later books (the casino coming straight from the very first book, _Savage Eyes_ , yet the character Renard first appearing in the fourth book, _Savage Seas_ , and Maw in _Savage Depths_ , the fifth). He didn’t know if this movie, named _Savage Love_ (the title of the ninth book), was the first in the brief line of films made from the books, but it was easy to jump into regardless, owing a lot to his almost religious knowledge of the original stories. He wondered if it would follow the plot of the ninth where Jack fell in love and married for all of five minutes before tragedy struck (he would never admit to crying the first time he read that but his mother had noticed the box of tissues in the kitchen had gone missing shortly after buying it), or combine other plots from the other books. Whatever they did, they had his undivided attention for the next ninety minutes, and they were doing a fine job of keeping it.

 

Jack looked as though he were about to break at any moment as Maw stood over him. His gun had been knocked from his hands and fell just a short distance away from him on the floor. He could crawl to it, if the bear wasn’t holding him in place with a foot on his already aching back. All he had to do was bring it down with enough force and it would be over, the hare squashed like a bug on the carpet, but that wasn’t Maw’s style. The Kodiak bear instead reached down and grabbed the hare by the ears again, raising him above his head as he grabbed his feet with his other paw, just as Jack aimed a few kicks at his stomach. There went both of his weapons, and in another second he would find himself limp in the jaws of the beast, who was already licking his lips with anticipation. He could still move his arms, for what little good Maw knew his upper body strength did him, and reached into his pockets, looking for something he could use to defend himself. Maw’s teeth were closing in on Jack’s neck, just as he found it.

In a swift motion Jack pulled a can of bear repellent from his pocket and sprayed it on Maw’s eyes and into his mouth. The bear roared in pain and anger, dropping the hare as he brought his paws to his burning eyes.

“Now where the heck did he get that?” Nick’s mother asked. Jack seemed to share that question as he furrowed his brow at the can, before smiling at it with a sigh.

“Cheryl, I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” Nick laughed in relief. Of course Cheryl Shilling, the loyal secretary to Jack’s boss, would trust him to recognize her penchant for leaving Jack surprise gifts that may or may not come in handy for whatever mission he went on. Mrs. Wilde didn’t think this a proper explanation for that solution coming right out of nowhere but Nick ignored her as Jack found his second wind against the bear. As Maw backed away near the windows Jack ran up to him and jumped as high as he could into the air, aiming both of his powerful feet at Maw’s chest. The force of the impact sent Maw flying out the window of the hotel room, forty-seven floors down, down, down and straight into the swimming pool.

Jack stretched as he poked his head out of the broken window, squinting at the water far below him.

“Hm,” he remarked, “didn’t know they had a pool.” He spun around and made a dash out the door, grabbing his gun as he did. Had he stayed and observed the pool for just a second more he might have seen a large Kodiak bear climbing out of it and slipping away into the shadows.

“Now that doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Mrs. Wilde said, “how do you survive a fall from that height?”

“Mooooooom!” She held up her paws in surrender as she went back to her knitting.

 

Jack took the stairs the rest of the way, Nick reasoning he probably didn’t want to take the chance of running into another old friend through the elevator. He needed the stairs to reach the roof of the hotel anyway. After about a minute of quick cuts and point of view shots detailing his ascent, Jack threw the door to the roof open, his ears forced backwards due to the force of the helicopter’s blades. Renard was stepping into it, with three wolves carrying machine guns already inside. They shot at the ground a few inches in front of Jack’s feet, bringing the hare to a stop.

The red fox looked back at Jack, bearing a smile he’d probably been saving if he ever won a round of craps. Reaching over the pilot he took the intercom, speaking into it to boast to his enemy.

“You don’t know when to give up do you?”

“Not entirely.” Jack replied, the blades too loud for the fox to hear. The fox’s laugh echoed through the intercom, sending chills down Nick’s spine. It was just how he’d always imagined Renard’s laugh.

Mrs. Wilde happened to look away from her work at the moment Renard laughed, spotting Nick’s shudder as he did. She frowned, worried at what the red fox on the screen and from his books might tell him how he should view himself and other foxes like him, but she shook her head. It was fiction, nothing more.

“As much as I’d love to see you full of holes, Savage, I think a more grandiose demise is in order considering our… history” (“Why not just kill him now,” Mrs. Wilde had to stop herself from asking). He pointed at the door behind Jack, where another wolf was standing. The door was shut before Jack could react, and a sound from behind it made it clear that he wasn’t going to get back in, no matter how hard he tried.

“Well,” Renard chuckled, “I’d better be going, Mr. Savage. It’s about to get a little too hot for my collar up here.” The wolves kept their guns on Jack as Renard gave his signature laugh. The helicopter rose slowly in the air before it flew away, turning into nothing but a speck of dust on the horizon. Whatever the fox had in store for him, he needed to get off the roof as soon as he could.

“Wilson, you there?” Jack’s right ear twitched as the radio buzzed monotonously, the fight with Maw doing quite a number on it. He ignored his prior advice and held a paw to his ear, having to practically squeeze the device into his canal to hear the voice on the other end clearly.

“-fear Jack, backup just arrived, what’s keeping you, the extraction team’s getting antsy.”

“Afraid I was caught in a diversion that was a bit hard to bear,” Jack said, the quip lost on his partner. “Renard’s escaped.” He cut to the chase with some scorn.

“Oh, of all the luck.” Wilson groaned.

“Seems like he had one good toss in him after all. But Wilson, please tell me someone left that emergency pack on the roof like they said in the briefing.”

“Yeah, I think they did, it should be near one of the air vents.” Jack ran to where the vents were on the roof, hearing a faint beeping sound coming from within one of them. He needed to move quickly.

He found the pack next to the vent on the south side of the roof, overlooking the entrance to the hotel and where the trucks from local police and the agency were beginning to gather around and seal off the area.

“All right,” Jack said to Wilson, “talk to you on the ground.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘on the ground’? Jack? Jack!” The hare didn’t respond. He had only a few ticks before what he thought was about to happen happened. And so, without further hesitation, he sprinted to the edge of the roof, pack secured tightly on his back, and jumped.

 

What happened next, young Nick would remember for the rest of his life. An image that was burned into his subconscious deeper than any he had read in the ten books he’d memorized cover to cover. The roof exploded in a flurry of fire and spectacle just as Jack’s foot left the edge of the hotel. He had narrowly avoided being burnt to a crisp from the radius of the explosion, but there was still the ground he had to contend with. Jack waited for a few floors as he built up speed in his descent, growing closer and closer to the ground. Then, around the thirtieth floor, he pulled on a strap of the pack and from the upper pocket a giant parachute with the flag of Zootopia emerged.

Nick’s mouth was agape as the camera lingered on the shot of Jack’s fall slowing to a gentle glide with the aid of the parachute, before cutting to a closer shot of the hare’s confident smile. All according to plan, he was probably thinking. From terra firma the officers and other agents watched as the roof went ablaze and Jack drifted closer and closer to them, Wilson already in a stretcher and about to be lifted into an ambulance when he saw him.

“Showoff.” The leopard rolled his eyes.

The camera cut to the aerial shot of the parachute again, and dissolved into a sultry melody as the credits began.

“That was only the pre-credits?” Mrs. Wilde said, checking her watch and the back of the box for how long the rest of the movie was. Nick was in ecstasy, laughing and kicking his feet as he rolled onto his back, staring happily at his mother. She laughed along with him, never seeing him more excited than he was now.

 

The next hour and a half is a bit of a blur to her; spy stuff, action gobbledy-gook, a more adult scene between Jack and a love interest she had to fast forward, and a climax she had to admit was pretty exciting. The difficult part came after the end credits were over and she had to tuck the young fox into bed.

“Wasn’t that part cool when he has that crane, and he drops Maw into that aquarium with the shark?!”

“Mm-hm,” she fluffed his pillow a bit before putting it back behind his neck.

“Or when the bad guys are getting away and he drives a tank through the town to chase after ‘em?!”

“Very exciting.”

“And that big fight at the end in the factory, holy freaking crap!”

“Hey, language.”

“Awwwww, it was so cool!” He shimmied into his covers and bounced his feet on the bed as he wore the brightest smile that made it impossible for her to scold him properly.

“You’re welcome.” She said.

“For what?”

“For getting it for you.”

“Oh yeah, thanks mom!”

“You’re welcome.” She repeated with a laugh, kissing her son on the forehead and wishing him a good night.

“You think I could be one?” Nick asked before she could close the door.

“Be what, sweetie?”

“A spy.”

“I thought you wanted to be a scout.”

“Oh I do, I do, but… I dunno, when I’m older and stuff?” Mrs. Wilde stared into her son’s wistful eyes, eyes that were ready and willing to take on the world for all it was worth, and believed so hard that he could do it. If only the world were kinder to mammals like them.

“You know,” she said, “I think real life spy work isn’t quite as exciting as the stuff in those books or that movie.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Nick’s eyes fell downwards and his beaming chest slunk onto the bed. Mrs. Wilde cursed herself before amending her answer.

“But you never know. You can do anything you want, Nicky. If you want to be a scout, you be a scout. And if you want to be a spy, you be a spy.” She’d even knit him his own tuxedo if she had to.

This response was all the encouragement the young fox needed. He smiled at his mother again and returned her good night.

“Love you.” She called as she shut out the light.

“Love you too.” Nick sat in the darkness, his adrenaline a bit too high to fall asleep immediately. As quietly as he could he got out from the covers and turned on the little lamp on the desk near his window, getting a pencil full of teeth marks from the drawer and a few pieces of paper. In his closet were several stories he’d already conceived about Jack Savage, and his partner, Nick Wilde. He figured while he was wide awake he might as well come up with one more story. Now that he’d seen an actual movie based off the already spectacular books the extents of his own mind were limitless.

“I’m gonna do it,” he said to himself, “one day, I’m gonna be a spy…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A random idea I had while looking at the concept art for Zootopia and the original idea to base the movie as a sort of '60s-esque spy-action flick a la the James Bond films (but with a bunny!). Obviously they went with the better choice to center the movie on the city and I would change very little about the finished product as it is now... but wouldn't it be neat if that original idea had been made?
> 
> I doubt I'm the first person to do this, but I figure since my mind was abuzz with all the possibilities for a Bond-esque spy movie featuring my favorite unlikely duo, I might as well do something with those ideas. I hope, if my motivation to actually get deeper into the story isn't shot, to base this partly as an AU to some of the plot of the movie, unused characters and deleted scenes/concepts, and a little bit of those action movie clichés I can't help but love. And if nothing else comes of those ideas... at least this prologue thingy works as a decent one-shot (the title is subject to change too if I think of anything better).
> 
> If I do end up writing more I'll add more character and additional tags as it goes on and those characters and elements are introduced. At the very least, I hope this first chapter was fun to read (and of course I'm open to criticism, lay it on me scat cat (also there is the possibility I may just regret the whole thing and delete this from every file on my computer and the internets... nah, I'll just leave it in limbo)).


	2. Chapter 2

Two hundred and thirty-seven.

After he had come down from the ladder and tossed the burnt out bulb in a small box along with the rest he’d unscrewed in the past hour, he’d marked the final tally on a little notebook his mom had given him as a moving out present years ago. They filled up about four pages, front and back, little lines and written numbers at the top of the paper, crossed out and replaced every other day.

He crossed out the number 204 and replaced it with 237, the new final count of all the light bulbs he’d changed in the past month (it was also, incidentally, an important number in some horror movie he caught on TV once as a teen). It was not a new record, that honor still belonging to the first month of his employment four months ago, where he had replaced 311 lights in total.

It was not a very taxing job, and not one that payed very generously either, and more often than not he would spend it cramped in a little room down by the boiler until someone called him over the walkie about trash that needed dumping, stains that needed cleaning or lights that needed changing. It was all very menial, yet if he could have his pick of the litter he would take a bathroom stall visited by a family of skunks over changing the lights any day.

For starters, it meant lugging the ladder that was too large for the elevator (and a bit too large for his “office” at that) up the stairs all by himself, leave it and go back for the spare bulbs, come back and be yelled at for leaving the ladder unattended, only to be yelled at again when he, gasp, had to change bulbs anywhere from the waiting room to the cubicles where his fellow “agents” worked.

“Real estate, Mr. Wilde,” he remembered his old guidance counselor saying, “it’s the safest job you can have.” He supposed there was some truth to Mr. Kowalski’s words. Even when the housing market crashed and burned every other decade or so, realtors always managed to land on their feet (he remembered his counselor making some easy joke about felines after saying something along those lines, and for how the Koala had been arrested for public indecency about a week after that meeting but that was beside the point).

Nick wasn’t a realtor, thank God, in fact he hadn’t even been a custodian (which was a fancier term for “janitor” which was an even fancier term for “slave”) for very long. If it were his choice he wouldn’t have been one at all, yet, here he was, doing the only job someone like him could get, that anyone with half a brain could do.

He ignored the condescending rhetoric of the porcupine whose cubicle he had to use to get at the last faulty light, going on a college thesis about how he was “wasting [her] time” and “cutting [her] off from very important calls,” so on, so forth, blah, blah, blah. He stuck to his regular routine whenever he had to deal with “agents” like her. He’d nod, shake his head and concede what a menace he was being to the all-powerful realtors of the upper floors, utter his pardons and leave with ladder, garbage or whatever cleaning utensils he’d had with him that were getting in the way of their precious telephones ringing with new, anticipating suckers and computers where they’d forgotten to close that incriminating tab.

He’d then retreat back down the stairs to his own little space, a former utility closet with a computer ten years too old and a single bulb that had to be replaced more often than all the others in the building. The retreat took longer on days he had to lug the ladder with him; He’d have to leave it in the second floor waiting room (knowing full well he’d get reprimanded for it later), take the plastic bag with all the burnt out or broken bulbs and take them down the stairs, out the front doors, and to the proper recycling bin some sadistic planner had decided to place about twenty feet away from the building, come back, engage his usual routine with the receptionist who would yell at him for leaving “that eye sore” in full view of clients, take said eye sore down the stairs step by step, take a left down the hall, to a door at the far right end of said hall, down another set of stairs to the closet by the boiler, and then inside the closet where he’d always had to rearrange the clutter of mops, brooms, garbage bags, replacement bulbs, toilet paper, air-fresheners, spray bottles, and leftover doilies from a Christmas party seven years ago in order to prop the ladder slantways against one of the walls, the end propping the door open just a hair.

The computer would usually be booted up by this time, and even if he couldn’t enjoy any of the incriminating websites the “agents” upstairs could (and did), it at least had Solitaire.

“Wilde do you copy?” Well, so much for that.

“Go for Wilde.”

“Mr.—EEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRP—in his office.”

“Repeat that, please.” Nick said as the ringing in his ears lessened. It was to be expected when they used walkies that were older than the building itself.

“Mr. Vacanti wants to see you in his office.” The voice in the walkie repeated.

“Now?”

“Now.”

He’d learned within the first few weeks it was best not to get too invested in whatever free time he had on the job. Even if the work was slow, as it almost always was, he couldn’t get through two pages of a book or watch more than five seconds of whatever popular video was trending online without being called to do something in any of the floors, rooms, or bathrooms of the building. It wasn’t a very large building, taking up only four floors in total and at most having only one-hundred realtors employed, yet somewhere, someone in that building had always managed to draw him away from whatever pleasure he’d managed to find to make the tedium more bearable.

It was even better when the head honcho had “some words,” as he always put it, for him. In the small amount of time he’d called Vacanti Real Estate his prison away from prison, the namesake of the company had seen to it that the fox would be his own, private whipping boy. No matter what he did, no matter how many mistakes were pointed out to him he was sure not to repeat, Vacanti would call him up to his office on the fourth floor to chide him on and on about some, miniscule detail he’d overlooked. Probably because he knew he could get away with it. On top of being the boss of the third most popular real estate company in the city (as voted in Zootopian Business Monthly twenty years ago), he also knew Nick wouldn’t do much to protest. Not like he had much of a choice.

Even with this foreboding knowledge, Nick treasured the rare moments he could actually ride the elevator. Custodial staff (i.e. him and some goat who was always taking sick leaves) were discouraged from using it due to the high class clientele Vacanti expected (but never received in this part of town), but the only exception to the rule was when the big cheese called you to his floor.

The fourth floor was composed only of a waiting room and Mr. Vacanti’s spacious office. And when he requested to see you, it was best to get to that rather spacious office within five to ten minutes, or the receptionist would hand you a pink slip before your feet even left the elevator.

He could see her as the door slid open, an older skunk wearing a lavender dress suit and reading glasses as she typed away on her keyboard. She didn’t acknowledge him as he stepped into the waiting room, or when he placed his arms on her desk and rested his chin on them.

“There’s my favorite secretary.” He spoke as though he were about to break into a song.

“Get your paws off my desk.” The skunk replied to the computer screen.

“Always so dour. Don’t you ever have a reason to smile while you work, ma petite poubelle?”

“No.”

“See, we already have so much in common!”

“He’ll see you now.” She pointed at the large doors behind her, fashioned in some odd, Baroque style with marble knobs of various sizes depending on the height of the mammal. He heard the familiar click of the large door unlocking remotely and propped himself off the secretary’s desk.

“Alas, that we should be parted once again, fair Laura. Though my eyes doth leave yours, know that your pungent aroma shall ever be present on the tip of my whiskers.”

“Just get inside, fox.” Laura sneered. Nick took a bow and opened the door with his hand behind his back. Turning around he was greeted to the ostentatious office of Mortimer Vacanti that somehow managed to look bigger and more grandiose with every time he was in there.

Hanging over the door was a huge picture of Chuck Vacanti, Mortimer’s father and the founder of Vacanti Real Estate. On the walls were pictures of the Vacanti family and various celebrities either Vacanti Sr. or his son had encountered and pestered/blackmailed into taking a photo. Plaques of the various awards given to the company (the dates never going past the first decade of its inception) hung in the spaces between those photos, as well as scholarships, scholastic awards in mathematics, athletic awards in fencing or cross country. The only thing that could really tie the room together, Nick decided, was a huge, bronze statue of Vacanti himself, one large enough to contain even a head the girth of his.

“Have a seat Mr. Wilde,” Vacanti called from the other end of the office, “I’d like some words with you.” (See)

The echo of footsteps reverberated against the walls as he took the long walk from the door to the seat in front of Vacanti’s desk. There ought to have been an escalator there, he thought, or whatever you called those moving walkways at airports. After an hour he pushed the chair back and made himself comfortable in it, sliding his tail in the hole at the bottom and resting his right leg on his knee.

Vacanti sat with his back to the fox, busy looking over sales reports or something of the like. He didn’t acknowledge Nick until about a minute after the fox had sat down, as it always was with big-wigs like him.

“Been a while since our last chat, eh?”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Nick said as if he couldn’t feel the life draining away from him with every hour that passed in this building. Vacanti made some noises in his throat, fiddling with the papers until the stack was exactly even.

Finally, when he’d made enough of a show about it, he turned around to face the fox. His scooter bumping against the desk and getting stuck as he did.

“Oh, for the love of-” The mouse began fidgeting with the buttons on a control panel, slowly backing the scooter out from underneath the larger desk, mainly there for presentation, and easing slowly into it before coming to a stop.

“Must get something done about that.” He muttered to himself. Nick had worked for a mouse before while he was a teenager working fast food, but even for all his Napoleon complexes he had never once seen Mr. Cotija ride atop a three and a half foot, manually operated scooter that was the definition of overcompensating.

He had to admit, the first time he saw it, it was a bit of a marvel. The head tube was at a strange angle that curved slightly before going upwards, and where handlebars might have been for any smaller mammal Nick’s size was a circular flat disk, large enough to house Vacanti and a desk more suitable for a mouse, while still giving him some mobility without going near the edge. They were all the rage with mice, or so the advertisement for it on a magazine clipping in the waiting room said.

“Well, Mr. Wilde,” Vacanti said after he finished mumbling, “you’ve been with us three months now, and I think that-”

“Four months.” Nick interrupted.

“Four?”

“You hired me in February.”

“Did I?” The mouse furrowed his brow, wracking his brain to try and remember.

“The month when Bart clogged up the second floor toilet and ruined the whole building’s plumbing?”

“Aha, of course, of course. Had to bring those pipes to the next century eventually, eh?” Vacanti laughed but Nick could barely restrain a shudder. He still remembered those three weeks like they had just happened. So much water. So much filth no mammal should ever have to expose themselves to. So much... so much…

“Anyway,” the mouse waved his hand, “I won’t bog you down with the usual, boring performance evaluation. You’re doing a fine job, everything’s been ship-shape since you joined us and I imagine if you keep going this rate you’ll have a fine future with Vacanti Real Estate.” Nick furrowed his own brows, unnerved that the mouse was being so amiable with him.

“Th-thank you, sir.” Vacanti nodded, scooping up the stack of papers in his paws.

“Now that that’s out of the way, I’m afraid I have to get to some unpleasantness.” Nick slumped into his chair. Of course it couldn’t be all smiles and pats on the back, it was always something with this mouse.

“As you no doubt have heard through the grapevine; profits are down lower than they have been the entire fiscal year. Long story short, we’re losing customers to that upstart Vincent Frisby at Rattopia Real Estate.” The mouse snarled at the mention of his business rival, an old friend from college, Nick had overheard.

“I’m afraid I’ve had to make some cuts and some losses here and there to accommodate for this unfortunate turn of events.” He said after regaining his composure. “I’ve already let go five animals this week.”

“Should I start editing my resume?” Nick asked, not anticipating the mouse to laugh at him.

“Perish the thought, Nick.” Now he was worried. The fox was certain Vacanti hadn’t even bothered to learn his name in all the time he’d been here. He was about to ask what he had done with his real employer when he went on. “Like I said, you’ve been doing an excellent job. Mr. Gruff,” the other custodian, “on the other hand, I may need to talk with him when he returns. But you, Nick, you’re the very model of what a janitor should be in a company such as this, and, might I add, a fine credit to your species.”

“Stop, you’ll make me blush.” He rolled his eyes when his boss briefly looked over the stack of papers again.

“You needn’t worry about losing your job Mr. Wilde. However,” here it was, “I’m afraid, for the time being, I will have to reduce your salary twenty percent.” Any dry response Nick had saved up was gone the moment he heard how much.

“Twenty percent?!” He repeated.

“I’m afraid so.” Vacanti took a drawn out sip of his cup as the fox stared at him, mouth agape. “Everyone’s had to make some adjustments to get the ball moving again.”

“No, you don’t get it, I already make less than minimum wage, I can’t-”

“You can’t what, Mr. Wilde?” The amiability in the mouse’s voice was gone, replaced by an animal more vicious than any predator he had ever met in his life. “You can’t be a team player and adjust to this temporary setback? You should have thought of that before you took the job.”

“You never said this would happen when I took the job.”

“C’est la guerre.” The mouse said with a shrug.

“No, no, you can’t do this, this is totally illegal!”

“Well you’d know all about that wouldn’t you, fox?” Nick clenched his teeth in rage, squeezing his paws into a fist as is claws dug into the armrests of the chair. “Besides, if you reread your contract you’ll see I’m in complete legal bounds to reduce your salary until I see fit.

“But of course,” he went on, “you’re more than welcome to bring this up with your parole officer, I’m sure they’d love for you to make a whole row over this.” Nick wanted so badly to take the mouse into his paws and toss him across the hall as hard as his arm could manage, but he knew the hard truth. He had read the contract before, plenty of times when he was first hired, and he knew very well it stipulated budget cuts when the company budget was dire. It didn’t matter whether or not Vacanti was signaling his salary out in particular, he had the law on his side. An ally Nick had never had the pleasure of knowing intimately.

“Well,” Vacanti clapped his paws together, “if you’ve no further questions, you may go now.” He gestured towards the door with his claws, burying his stupid, pink nose in the stack of papers. Nick had plenty of things he wanted to say but knew there was no point in it. He pushed the chair out from under him and stormed back to the office door, paws firm in his pockets, ready to strangle the nearest mammal if left unsupervised. The nearest right now would be Laura, still typing away at whatever important files she pretended to be working on. The doors shut behind him, and Nick went to the elevator without another word.

“Oh, Mr. Wilde!” Nick held the elevator doors open as Laura called out to him. “Don’t forget to smile!”

 

The rest of his shift couldn’t have been over faster if his life had depended on it. There was a part of him that felt like storming out the door after that meeting with Vacanti, and making a big show of it too. End up on one of those intricate “I quit” stories you stumble across online that featured a whole musical number with a chorus line. The sad fact of the matter was he had no chorus line on standby, and there wasn’t a whole lot of good quitting would do. Sure, it would give him momentary catharsis, but then he’d just be back in the mirthless abyss that was job hunting, and he’d rather avoid drowning in that ocean again while he still could.

It didn’t matter anyway. Five, slow, grueling hours later he was out of the building, walking along the deserted streets of the bowery as he made his way to the subway station, wondering if the rest of the custodial staff, the goat and the mammals who took over the night shift (whoever they were they were pretty awful), would be hit as hard as he was with cut backs.

That was the thing about this that irked him the most, he decided. He didn’t know if Vacanti was doing this because of how little mammals like him valued those who worked where Nick did, or if it was the stain on Nick’s record he was legally required to reveal on every job application. A black spot that followed the fox everywhere he went, ensuring the only job he could get and keep all these weeks was the one that made him want to jump from the window of Vacanti’s office. Even then, there was always the simpler reason that all this was happening just because he was a fox. He’d been down that road before…

Brush it off, Wilde, he’d always tell himself on days like this. Just push through it.

“Well, well,” a deep voice hit his chest like a drum, “look what the pigs let loose.” Nick was pulled out of himself by the voice, looking all around him to find its source. He could recognize it, but it had been so long…

“Hey, genius, down here.” Nick’s eyes fell to a fox about two heads shorter than him. A fox with perhaps a greater need to overcompensate for his height than if Vacanti were riding a dozen fancy scooters piled on top of each other.

“Woah there, you’ll have to speak up little buddy.” Nick said scratching the inside of his left ear. “Kind of hard to hear you all the way up here.”

“Real cute,” Finnick snarled as he began to walk with him, “you get that from a joke book or something?”

“I don’t steal all my material.” Nick kept his eyes ahead of him, the corner of them barely registering the fennec who could easily pass as his son to those who didn’t know or care about the distinction between their species (it had certainly helped them both too many times to count before).

“Heard you don’t steal much of anything anymore.” Finnick said, shining a pair of sunglasses with his T-shirt (a stylish, black polo brand with a red line going along the side of the front and back, the fanciest thing you could ever associate with him).

“Kicked the habit,” Nick shrugged, “prison tends to do that to you.” 

“Come on,” Finnick laughed, “not even those pens they leave in the little coffee mugs at offices like that? _Everybody_ steals those, even religious suckers.”

“Oh, so you know where I work that’s not creepy.”

“What can I say, it pays to keep tabs on people.”

“Only if you want something from them.” They passed by a fruit vendor Nick usually ignored but something about the fennec’s company made him a bit more daring today. In the blink of an eye his paw passed over a basket and before the doe could realize something was amiss his mouth was full of blueberries. Nectar from the Gods on high, he had long ago decided.

“Can’t a guy drop in on somebody without getting grilled for it?” Finnick’s hands were in his pockets, eyeing two children coming down the sidewalk who were snickering at him. He aimed a bite their way to scare them off, still growling as Nick swallowed the last of the berries.

“Look, I’ve been out of prison less than a year now, I don’t need any extra trouble.”

“I’m not here to give you any.” He shrugged.

“But you’re here to offer some, aren’t you?” Nick looked down at his former partner for the first time in the whole conversation, raising a contemplative eyebrow at the midget and contemplating mimicking an old elevator to get down to his eye level like he used to. A trick that would guarantee at least a grimace. Finnick cut him off by stepping out in front of him.

“All right look,” he waved his paws in defeat, “I get that you wanna go straight, and I’m cool with it. There’s a lot of guys we know that weren’t so cool with it, they wanted to come after you and make sure you didn’t spill anything in the joint, but I made ‘em back off. You’re a lot of things but I know you ain’t a-”

“Who calls it ‘ _the joint_ ’ anymore?”

“What?”

“Pretty sure there was a weasel who got beat up in there his first day for calling it ‘ _the joint_.’” Nick said with a chuckle. “That’s as bad as calling it ‘ _the pokey_ ’ or ‘ _the slammer_.’”

“Whatever man, you’re missing the point!”

“I mean, who legitimately thinks that’s a cool thing to say anymore? You look like a five-year-old but I thought you were at least-”

“Would you shut up for five seconds?!” This was better than therapy, Nick thought. “I’m reaching out to you here for the first time in, what, two years, with a good deal and all you can do is make wisea-”

“Time.”

“What?”

“You said five seconds. I did it. Happy?” He could almost see the steam blowing out from his enormous ears.

“I am this close,” Finnick held his finger and thumb about an inch apart, “from pushing you into traffic right now, Nick.”

“Oh sure, warn me when a bus comes.” Nick said, gesturing to the abandoned street. There was never a lot of traffic in this part of town around dusk. Finnick had the appearance of a shaken up bottle ready to explode with one more twist of the lid. With a heavy sigh the fennec reeled it in, his eye still twitching as his voice became calm.

“Look, like I said, I don’t care if you’ve gone straight. I’m only here ‘cause I think I may have an easy way for you to get a little extra cash, just this once.”

“Yeah thanks, but I think I’m good.” Nick was about to sidestep the fennec but there was a perk to him being so small. Mainly that you couldn’t slip past him so easily.

“I know I screwed you over pretty hard the last job, and I… it was a flub all right, I didn’t think things would go south like they did.”

“I don’t need a pity job, all right?” He crossed the street without even bothering to see if anybody was coming. If he was hit at least it would be an excuse to get out of this conversation.

“It ain’t about me feeling sorry for you or whatever,” Finnick said, chasing after him, “it’s just a way for us to be… even, y’know?”

“So you mean you’ll take the fall for it when it all goes to crap this time, right?” Nick asked over his shoulder.

“Don’t be stupid, Nick, we both know you would’ve ditched me too if I ended up where you were.” Nick stopped, causing the fennec to almost bump into his legs. He opened his mouth to say something, but shut it as quickly as the thought came. It didn’t matter what he would have done if Finnick were in his shoes. What was done was done, and it’s not like he was entirely bitter about it. After an entire lifetime of being him, bitter didn’t have the same punch as it did to other mammals.

“So?” He said turning around. Finnick stared at him, not sure what to make of the response before Nick motioned with a paw for him to go on.

“You remember that guy Cooper knew from the Rainforest District?”

“That depends, we talking about the creepy bat with the doll collection or the tapir who had that great butterscotch cookie recipe?”

“The bat.” Just once, Nick thought, why couldn’t it ever be the cookie guy? “Well the bat, Bram, he’s got this beef with some rich punk in Sahara Square who has some collectibles that used to belong to him, he sold the collectibles without telling him, he wants some compensation, he won’t give any, he can’t go to the cops ‘cause of some priors-”

“Finnick, I’m going for popcorn.”

“All right, cut to the chase, Bram had a job for Cooper but he’s got some family crap to deal with so he recommended us.”

“Us?”

“He recommended me,” the fennec said, “but the way Cooper talked about it I knew it was too big a job for just me, y’know? And – don’t you even try it!” Finnick shouted before Nick could get a good quip in. He never could let him have his fun. “– And I figured, since you’re out of the… out of prison, you might be interested.”

“Like you said,” Nick shrugged as he resumed his pace on the sidewalk, “I don’t do that anymore.”

“Hey, come on man! I could’ve called anybody up for this job!” Then why didn’t you, Nick would have asked if Finnick let him get a word in. “Duke, those gerbil twins, anybody, they all would’ve done it, but they ain’t you, man. You used to breathe this stuff, you used to plan out hustles in like an hour before we tried ‘em. And they _all_ worked!”

“Not all of them.” Nick corrected him, his voice turning uncharacteristically cold for a moment.

“Okay, so you had one screw up in the past ten years we’ve known each other, so what? You’ve still got like a…” he did some math on his fingers, “Ninety-five percent average, huh?”

“That’s not how you do averages.”

“DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A-HMMMMM!!!” Nick smirked. “Point is, you’ve got way more hits under your belt than misses, and I need something like that for a job like this.”

“I already have a job.” Nick was content to leave it at that and walk away, but Finnick had always been a hard salesman.

“Yeah, sure. And what’re you making an hour? Minimum, less? I know they don’t pay convicts all that great in big, stuck up companies like that one.” Nick stopped again, the fennec’s words resonating within him more than he would have liked. “Remember how much we used to make daily? Don’t you ever want a piece of that again?” Nick kept eye contact with the ground, a part of him that wanted to look the midget in the eye and tell him to get lost, and stay there for good. But resting on his other shoulder, yelling as loudly as the first desire, was the part of him that wanted to admit with every fiber of his being that yes, he did miss it. A masochistic drive within him did miss how easy it all had been. Cheating “the man” and all the suckers who looked down on them because of where they were born and what they were born as. It was all so liberating, so carefree.

“Tell you what,” Finnick slapped the fox's knee as he stood in front of him again. “You get Saturdays off, right?”

“If you really missed me that much I can give you a picture. It’ll last you a good couple months, at least.”

“I will bite you.” He said plainly. Nick shook his head. “Just, come by the Palm Hotel Saturday at two-ish, all right? I’ll set it up with Bram and we can all sit down at the café or whatever and he’ll give you the full story. Deal?” He didn’t hold out his hand or anything to seal the deal but Nick could still see it like a phantom hanging over him (or under him in Finnick’s case). A deal with the Devil to sign a few more years of his life away. What was another five or six for a repeat offense at this point?

“Don’t feel obliged to answer right away,” Finnick said, backing away from him. “All you gotta do is show up Saturday. If you do, great, if you don’t, I’ll just get somebody else, no problem.” Nick was still silent as Finnick walked away, down a side street to some unknown alley or pub to gamble or forget the last couple hours. “Think it over Nicky-boy,” he called as he left, “it’d be good for you!”

Nick watched him disappear around the corner, shaking his head as the very tip of his elephant-worthy ears faded from view. He was alone again, only his thoughts and the handful of mammals he passed giving him suspicious glances from the corner of their eyes to keep him company. He tried not to put too much stock into Finnick’s proposition, but the more he rewound it and let it play over in his head the more… enticing it felt.

His parole officer had warned him about this. His own, metaphysical conscience given form in the shape of a golden mare named Deborah.

“Temptations, Mr. Wilde,” she’d said the day before he was released, “they’ll be all around you once you’re back in the real world.”

“The real world.” As if prison were some other reality in a parallel dimension you crossed into. The more time he spent as an ex-convict, the more that analogy rang true. Nothing had every truly felt normal after he’d done his time. The things that came easy to him before, the “temptations” as Deborah would call it all feeling stronger knowing there was someone watching your back, no matter how small they were. Even stealing that handful of blueberries felt like a step in the dark. And every time he took another step, he could never tell if his foot would land where he wanted, or if he would stumble and fall worse than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was gonna draw out this chapter a little longer but I like that last line so I figured that would be a good place to end it.
> 
> I tried not using phrases like "handful" or stuff relating to hands a lot cuz they're animals and all but, screw it, hands or paws, potato-potahto (at least to me).
> 
> If it wasn't painfully obvious while reading this, I'm sorta trying to keep the story in the realms of what might pass for a PG-rating just cuz I wanna challenge myself to try and stick as close to the tone of the movie as I can. Even though there'll be at least one scene I have planned that might not pass a PG movie nowadays but... we'll just have to see how that goes if/when we get there.


	3. Chapter 3

The train came to its final stop at the docks, about thirty blocks away from Savannah Central. Despite this distance, the trip to and from the station at the docks, the station at the heart of the city, and Vacanti Real Estate all together took about an hour, not helped by the train having to stop in every district along the way, the docks always being dead last on the list.

This was understandable, considering the trains coming out of Central Station were meant for one, primary purpose; Tourism.

In the same vein of a taxi driver taking the longest way possible to drive up the final price, the trains gave tourists the run of the town, passing through every major “must-see” attractions in all the districts from Tundratown to Sahara Square. Generally, tourists would probably get off the train somewhere between those or the Rainforest District stops. The passengers always grew sparse by the time the train trudged through the Meadowlands, a decidedly bleak part of town that even most locals steered clear from, and carried only about a handful by the time the train came to its final stop at the docks, where only shipyard workers, gangbangers and maritime lawyers dared venture.

The apartments in the docks were also some of the most affordable in the city if you were on a tight budget, so it was here that Nick Wilde found himself calling a temporary abode ever since he left prison.

He had been a drifter most of his life; Out of his mother’s apartment the moment he turned eighteen, living with a few friends as he finished out high school and had his diploma sent to him in the mail (delivered to his mother’s address, mostly to spite her). After that most of his focus was building up some money for himself. Pawpsicle scams, insurance hustles, random surveys suckers would leave their personal information on, all child’s play, and all had provided him a certain amount of comfort.

Though he made a decent amount of money per day, not accounting for the shares of partners like Finnick, he had never had an apartment of his own, nor did he really need one. There were still plenty of places he could crash and plenty of old friends who could accommodate him (new friends too, in the right clubs), and he could always count on some abandoned houses or apartments when the housing market crashed a few years’ back. He had made it fine for himself without the _comforts_ of owning a home or renting an apartment thus far, but he knew the moment he set foot out of prison those doors that were once left open for him at his leisure would close, and squatting with a documented criminal record was too great a risk. If he so much as sneezed on a cop he’d probably get thrown under the long and painful bus that was the law. It was the way of the world for foxes like him.

His parole officer had helped him look for an apartment, but she couldn’t float him the money for rent herself. Fortunately, he’d had enough legitimate money saved up to afford the first few months, up until his wallet started to run dry and his need for a job became more and more apparent. Deborah had done her best to help him find one, she was getting payed to after all, but nowhere but Vacanti took, and even that was barely enough to keep up with the monthly expenses (and it was only going to get worse after the news that his salary would be cut). It was still not as bad as it could have been if he had gotten an apartment at Central or one of the more popular districts, and anywhere was better than the slums of the Meadowlands, but his wallet wasn’t getting any fatter, and propositions like Finnick’s were getting harder and harder to ignore.

At the very least, the docks were always a great place for him to forget his troubles deeper in the city. From the moment he stepped out of the train doors and got a whiff of the sweet aroma of fish and urine it was if he had stepped into another dimension entirely. It helped that the bright lights of the city, at times blinding to mammals who saw better in the dark, were farther off and the streets were always dim and scarce, populated only by the new and old generation or drifters like him.

He could see some of them now as he walked down the steps of the train stop, homeless gathered around a garbage can on fire, some bumming one from it or each other. Delinquents after his own heart patrolled the area, marking their territory with random gibberish from a spray can. They would all glare at him as he passed, the teens and the homeless, but no one paid him more mind than that. It wasn’t as if random muggings never happened in these neighborhoods, he’d seen his fair share, but being a fox did have its advantages when it came to preconceived reputations.

Most of the teens on the block could probably hand him his tail between his legs in the blink of an eye, the homeless too depending on their size or girth, but it was generally accepted on the streets that foxes were not to be messed with if you could help it. You never knew when one had connections or worked as a courier to some of the crime bosses of Tundratown or the Meadowlands, and unless you wanted to go to war with any of them if you saw a fox you were best leaving it alone. Nick had done his time working under a few crime families, none of them would lose any sleep if any harm came to him, but his would-be accosters didn’t know that and he saw no reason to tell them.

As it was, the walk from the train stop to his apartment was thankfully brief, about twenty minutes to a worn down building overlooking the bay and a nearby shipyard. The sun had just about set over the horizon by the time he sauntered up to the apartment door, shuffling the keys on his ring till he found the one for the gate that stood in front of the door (it never hurt to be too careful). He stepped inside and shut the gate slowly, grinding his teeth as it creaked with every infinitesimal movement. It finally clicked back into its place and Nick locked it again, praying to anyone who didn’t hate him that his landlord hadn’t heard him come in.

“ **YOU WORTHLESS, CHEATING, MAGGOT!!!** ” Nick flinched at the familiar voice from down the hall. He was slow to turn around in its direction, expecting to see a very small, very angry badger (the worst combination) and was relieved to find empty space instead. The door to Mr. Grahame’s was ajar, enough that the light from his TV was shining out into the hall. He was wrapped up in the latest football match, Dirty Yellows vs. True Blues, and, from the sound of it, gnawing at a throw pillow as the game went on.

“ **HE TRIPPED HIM! THE DIRTY LION TRIPPED HIM!** **AND YOU’RE NOT GONNA CALL HIM OUT ON THAT, YA STUPID, BLIND AARDVARK?!** ”

In his current state it was probably best to avoid him, something Nick did regardless of his landlord’s mood, so he crept up the rickety old stairs as softly as he could, wincing at every floorboard that creaked, hoping the badger’s guttural cries would mask them.

He came to a stop, unclenching his tail as he did, at the fifth door on the third floor, Casa del Wilde. Instinctively he reached into his pocket and pulled out the proper key without even looking at it; a rusty, jagged, bronze monstrosity that looked more like an instrument of torture than a key. He had to fiddle with it, predictably, to get it into the door all the way, and always ran the risk of breaking it if he turned it too hard in the lock. He’d had to get it replaced a few times before, but would rather not do anything that might make Mr. Grahame downstairs any more peeved than he already was tonight. And even if the key failed him, at least he was a skilled pickpocket.

Such skills were of no use tonight, as the door unlocked without a fuss and Nick escaped inside, locking it as he did.

The apartment was barren. Not one you would expect to find in any building above a three-star rating on any listing sites but still spotless for what it was. Nick had never cared about keeping a clean house one way or another, but he also didn’t have much that could clutter a small space such as this.

He hadn’t had much before he was sent to prison, and had even less when he came out. Only a few shirts and pants that could cover every day of the week plus two days into the next, a toothbrush he probably should get around to replacing, and an assortment of tacky ties that belonged to his dad (the kind that were loose enough to slip your head in and out without grievance).

He slipped out of one of these ties and hanged it up on the inside of the closet door, along with the rest, taking off his shoes and leaving them by the front door for the next day. His yawn was only beaten by the grumbling in his stomach, loud enough to disturb the badger two floors below. The bones in his arms cracked and popped as he stretched them, making his way down the hall and to the kitchen on the first right.

The most he could afford in terms of meals were frozen TV box dinners and breakfast cereals, relying on the vending machine at work for a quick lunch. He pulled the refrigerator open with his foot, peering his head inside to see what tickled his fancy tonight.

The first thing that caught his eye was the small, plastic container filled with blueberries. Tempting, as always, but not enough to sate him. Pulling the small drawer at the bottom open he was greeted by the small boxes of frozen dinners, mostly composed of items like mac and cheese, vegetable soup, and pineapples that were meant to be a desert but often stuck to the tray when heated, rendering them inedible unless you wanted a mouthful of plastic. None of these would probably sate him either, but they did their job fine enough.

He propped himself against a cupboard after he put a tray in the microwave and watched as it circled inside, seeing the numbers ticking slowly to zero out of the corner of his eye. From another corner he could make out the outline of his landline phone, a truly archaic mechanism in this day and age. Keeping that thing was part of what made the rent so expensive, but it wasn’t like he could afford a twenty-first century phone on his budget. The thing that bothered him the most about it, he decided, wasn’t how expensive or old it was, it was the reminder he’d idiotically put on it some months back and was too much of a wuss to throw away.

Haphazardly placed underneath the receiver was a little sticky note, marked with big words written in a red pen, and a telephone number cramped in the lower right corner.

**CALL HER.**

Three minutes, an extra thirty seconds to stir the mashed potatoes, and three more minutes later he was sitting on the couch in front of the TV, plastic tray in lap and the number on the phone promptly ignored.

Everything on the tray had, at best, a stale flavor, even the potatoes, by and large always the best part, resembling more of a gray mush than what was advertised. He could only ever eat about two-thirds of any given frozen box dinner as it was, since one-third was usually occupied by a salmon or trout (fish had never sat right in his stomach), and in this particular box was what might have been his least favorite vegetable (well, maybe in the top five); Carrots.

He ate them regardless, not having the kind of wallet that could argue, and began to regret not taking out that container of blueberries to help wash it down.

His thumb was on auto-pilot as he ate, flipping to random channels until something interested him. He passed the news, too depressing, and the sports station, never a fan of any of them, the soap opera channel, he’d seen school plays with better acting, the Spanish channel, good for a laugh making up what they were saying, and several others before coming to rest at some medieval snuff-drama practically every animal in the world couldn’t shut up about (despite his indifference).

Half-mindedly he watched the antics of mythological beasts and royal families that could put the Sawyers to shame while his conversation with Finnick from earlier played on repeat in his mind. Perhaps it was exacerbated seeing the shrew, everyone’s favorite character, try and strike a dangerous deal with the lady who owned all the dragons (who had time to remember all these made up names) but no matter how hard he tried to get the fennec out of his head, the more his proposition enticed him.

He changed the channel, having his fill of conspiracies for one day, and happened upon the middle of an infomercial.

“—our spas cater to animals of all shapes and sizes, from the tiniest rat to the tallest giraffe, ensuring that no matter who you are you will always be provided for.” He left it here as he forced himself to finish the rest of the carrots, hoping the insipidness would distract him.

“With our beautiful beaches, fine dining, hiking trails, and so much more to discover, there’s never been a better time to book your flight and get away from it all. Come join us at Isla Paraíso, a paradise for all mammals under the sun.” He cocked an eyebrow and gave a mirthless chuckle. Every other tourist hotspot was advertising itself as an “escape” or a place of “equal opportunity.” It was never true, but after today he couldn’t deny that it sounded as tempting as the other offer he’d been given. Now where did he put that thirty years’ worth of paychecks to afford such a getaway?

He turned the channel again, this time to a random old movie, and finished his meal in silence. He sat on the couch for about an hour afterwards, letting his mind wander to various random subjects. Flashes of memory, random thoughts about his coworkers or random animals he’d seen on the streets, it all became a blur as he stared into the abyss of flashing images and products nobody needed but bought by the dozen anyway.

He didn’t need to take Finnick up on his offer either, he was content where he was now. Maybe not happy but happiness was a croc term anyway. No one was ever truly happy with what they were doing. Everyone had had certain expectations as to where they had ended up and even if they landed those dream jobs there were always complications that kept you from really enjoying them. Peers you couldn’t stand or couldn’t stand you, the costs of owning your own home or keeping your insurance up to date. No, happiness was never in the cards for living a successful life, and anyone who said it was had grown up watching way too many cartoons.

But, he thought, no one said living comfortably and being happy were the same thing. Looking around him, and at the hot plastic tray that was still sitting on his lap, he thought that he could do with a little more comfortable living than what had become the new normal for him. He’d never be able to live anything close to “comfortably” on his income. Not like how he used to live…

Half an hour later the TV was off and the fox found himself staring at a different abyss, the ceiling over his twin-sized bed. Drumming his fingers together Nick memorized what Finnick had told him before he left; Saturday at the Palm Hotel in Sahara Square, two-ish. He turned over from the abyss and shut his eyes as he pondered.

Maybe at least hearing what the job was couldn’t hurt in the long run.


	4. Chapter 4

No sooner had Nick remembered falling asleep that night did he step out of the train and into Sahara Square the following Saturday, straightening his loose, tacky tie and observing the time on the nearby clock that hung above the exit of the station. Ten minutes to two, plenty of time to reconsider. He could easily hop on the next train and head back to his apartment, spend the precious hours he had away from work the way he truly wanted to (asleep on his couch). It was leaving in less than five minutes, and even Finnick said he would get somebody else if he didn’t show. What was stopping him?

Five minutes later he was wiping away the sweat from his brow as he walked down the streets of the square, making his way to the tallest building in the district, resembling, aptly, a gigantic palm tree, and perhaps the most modern looking building in the blistering desert. The clay and rock architecture helped to keep their interiors cool in the heat, but they offered very little in the way of spectacle that places like Tundratown or Savannah Central had. This only made the Palm and other casino/hotels in the district like it stand out more by comparison, which he figured was probably the point.

He could see it now, it was impossible not to in any part of Sahara, resembling an actual oasis in the middle of a vast and desolate landscape. Obviously, if he really wanted to, there were plenty of buildings he could slip inside to get a little AC but there was no time to take a little break as the clock ticked closer to two.

He tugged at the collar of his shirt, fanning himself with his tie as his tongue involuntarily hanged out of his mouth. The heat had never been a place for furry animals like him, at least the kind where their fur hadn’t evolved to accommodate over a hundred degrees on any given day. He’d done a few odd jobs and various schemes in Sahara every now and then but he never liked to stay for too long if he could help it. Wandering the scorching streets for the first time since he got out of prison was a clear reminder of why.

“Stop the oppressive bias against predators!” An armadillo shouted while shoving a flier into his face. Nick stared at it, blinking as he tried to register what it said.

“What are you on about?” He asked the armadillo, a girl who couldn’t be older than twenty.

“Sir,” she said, “this Tuesday, Mayor Lionheart is holding a press conference at City Hall to lay out his plans for Zootopia for the rest of the year.”

“Good for him,” Nick said in an overtly cheerful manner, “now if you’ll excuse me-”

“Please, sir,” the armadillo sidestepped in front of him, blocking his escape, “the Mayor continually refuses to acknowledge the growing bias the judicial branch, police department, and general public show towards predators like you.”

“Well, thank God you’re here to speak up for them then.” He pat her shoulder before trying to leave, but the girl was persistent.

“That’s why,” she continued as if he hadn’t said anything, “we’re organizing a sit-in at the press conference, predators and prey alike, until he has to acknowledge us!” She pointed at the flier with an eager grin. Nick rolled his eyes and took one, skimming it as the armadillo looked on expectantly.

_'Gazelle urges you to join her in a peaceful protest this Tuesday the fifteenth, as we sit in on Mayor Lionheart’s press conference and demand he address the growing tension that seeks to divide our beautiful city.’_

“Snappy.” He said dryly after he had read it. Underneath the paragraph was a list of other celebrity names that would be joining the pop star, as well as general information like where City Hall was, the time of the conference (one o’clock sharp), yadda, yadda, yadda.

“You want me to sign anything or what?” He said as he folded the flier into fours and put it in his pocket.

“Not at all, sir,” the armadillo looked as though the simple act of him indifferently keeping it was akin to toppling a dictatorship, “Just come to the sit-in this Tuesday, and tell your friends!”

“Oh, I will.” He clicked his tongue as he winked at her, the enthusiastic activist finally letting him pass as she moved on to a pair of camels. He looked over his shoulder at her when she was far enough away and made a noise of disgust as he rolled his eyes.

Tensions between predators and prey had always been high, but it was true they were spiking exponentially as of late. It wasn’t exactly clear what had put salt in the already festering old wound, but the effects were seen all throughout the city, he’d even had to avoid a few riots a couple weeks back on his way home from work. He would be lying if he said he didn’t care at all about them, but he knew something like a sit-in wasn’t going to do spit to the problem at large. Pop culture icons like Gazelle liked to add themselves into social issues like this to make animals think they cared but more often than not they were just doing it to put their name in the spotlight a little longer. Especially rich when you couldn’t go five feet in Sahara alone without seeing a billboard of her advertising either her concert or some other product.

‘ _If I’m staying in Sahara Square, I’m at the Palm_ ,’ one of them read. Maybe he’d bump into her then, he thought with a dry chuckle.

The Palm stood in the center of a large roundabout, surrounded by smaller casinos and hotels on all sides of the circle. Well, they were smaller in comparison to the Palm anyway. The literal centerpiece of Sahara Square was not a large building when compared to the gigantic structures in the heart of Zootopia that were still clearly visible in the next district over, but it still overlooked the entirety of its own district and served as a decent guide reference for wherever you wanted to go in it.

To Nick it was a beacon. A lighthouse that would either lead him to security or to a quick and messy end. That all depended on what that bat had in store for him and Finnick.

He crossed the street at the crosswalk and made his way to the entrance of the Palm, slipping into the revolving doors and narrowly avoiding another group of activists forcing fliers for their sit-in down every passerby’s throat. The courtyard outside was extravagant enough, with plenty of lush fountains and foliage to evoke a desert oasis, but it was nothing compared to the front lobby.

 

If the outside was meant to evoke an oasis in a blazing hot desert, then the inside was a little piece of Heaven in the hell that was Zootopia.

Crowded with mammals and bellhops hustling and bustling every which way, some taking a moment to admire the palm trees scattered about the lobby; some in the longue where many a mammal were catching up and resting, some in the small pond where kits were throwing away their coins while their parents threw their own money away buying newspapers and magazines at the nearby newsstand, but to the majority of newcomers, their eyes would first fall upon the gigantic banyan tree that marked reception, where an assortment of mammals, from a giraffe to an otter, were getting guests signed into their proper rooms, sending them on their way with a bellhop in toe.

Nick had done business in the Palm before, reducing all of these sights to a dull distraction for him as he tried to remember where the café was. Glancing at a clock at the newsstand gave him the time, five minutes after. He’d always been fashionably late in the past but he didn’t know how long Bram would wait. Finnick had always known him better than he ever cared to, and for all he knew when he expected to meet at a certain time he meant only at that time, a second later being a deal breaker. He shook off his nerves and stood in front of a map of the first two levels of the hotel. He spotted it on the second floor, predictably where all the other shops and restaurants were. Satisfied he turned to make for the escalator, bumping into what he assumed was one of the smaller bellhops, sending the bag in their hands to the floor and seeing all its objects scatter about the floor.

“Excuse me,” he was about to say before the presumed bellhop beat him to the punch.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! Wasn’t paying attention at all which way I was going, didn’t mean to bump into you like that, such a klutz, sorry…” She spoke at a mile a minute, apologizing profusely as she picked up her things (clothes mostly) and threw them back into her suitcase. Nick gathered a few loose shirts himself, steering clear of any more delicate valuables, and observed the mammal he had momentarily crossed paths with.

She stood about a head smaller than him, not counting her ears that passed his by a few inches when erect, and was wearing a bright pink flannel shirt with red stripes and blue work jeans. A farmer, Nick assumed by the scruff of her clothing and the type of clothes she stuffed in her suitcase. A tourist probably visiting the city for the first time and couldn’t afford any actual, city clothes for her little excursion. She had the general look of any bunny he’d seen a million times before (and who had all made quite the effort to cross the street when they saw _him_ ). Gray fur, black tips at the top of her ears, and lavender eyes that were the only distinguishable feature of her otherwise bland appearance.

“Agh, I’m really, really sorry.” She kept apologizing, giving him an awkward smile exposing her enormous bunny-teeth that he remembered always unnerved him slightly as a kit (because honestly, if a bunny really wanted to, they could do serious damage with those hideous dentures).

“Don’t worry about it, lady.” He handed her the last of her shirts and was content to leave doing his good deed of the day, until she offered him her paw.

“Oh, my name’s…” She cut herself off before abruptly continuing, “Olivia Newpaw.” Nick cocked his brow at her, gingerly shaking her paw.

“Wilde, Nick Wilde.” He introduced himself in a habitual manner, thinking to himself how little telling her his name would matter when he’d no doubt never see her again after this. She brought both her paws down to her suitcase and lifted it with relative ease.

“Sorry, I kinda got a little awestruck,” she apologized again as she looked around her, “this place is just… bigger than I thought it’d be.”

“You get used to it.” He replied with a shrug.

“I hope so.” The bunny laughed in as awkward a manner as the rest of the conversation had been. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the front desk is, by the way, would you?”

“Over there.” He gestured behind him with his thumb. Ms. Newpaw smacked herself on the forehead.

“Duh. Of course it’d be that one. Thank you!”

“Don’t mention it.” He put his fingers in his pockets and started back on his way to the escalators.

“Sorry again for bumping into you!” She called as she made her own way to the front desk, Nick waving an arm in indifference. With a warm smile and a wave of her own, the bunny hopped off, Nick grateful that he didn’t have to be around her any longer. That saccharine, doe-eyed naivety was only so tolerable, especially in bunnies.

 

“Hey, Nick!” Nick had to crane his neck over a raccoon to see the fennec running up to him. “Was starting to think you wouldn’t show up.”

“O ye of little faith.”

“Don’t you start.”

“Lighten up, Fin,” Nick said as a smile crept upon his lips, “just busting your chops. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”

“I will kill you. Right here. In front of everybody.”

“Tall order.”

“Shut up!”

“Short fuse.”

“ **I’M GONNA BITE OFF YOUR NOSE AND SHOVE IT SO FAR UP YOUR** -” Finnick climbed down from Nick’s chest, straightening his tie and sporting a huge grin for all their audience to see. “Anyway,” he cleared his throat, “glad you came. Bram’s been waiting for you; he’s been getting antsy.”

“Well, you know how I always like to keep my audience in suspense.”

“Don’t be smart with him, Nick. He takes things literally, the sensitive sort, y’know?”

“Couldn’t imagine.” The quip was either ignored or missed by Finnick who gestured for the fox to follow him.

“C’mon, we got a table over here.” Nick grabbed hold of Finnick’s hand, the fennec looking up at him in disgust.

“It’s a big crowd,” He said, emulating his mother.

“Get offame!” Finnick jerked his hand away. Just like old times, the fox thought to himself.

Sitting at a small table near the railing overlooking the lounge was a rare sight anywhere in Zootopia. Bats most commonly hung around in caves deep at the bottom of the Rainforest District, hardly ever coming out during the day and almost never venturing into other districts like Sahara Square. Even from this distance Nick could tell that Bram took no pleasure being out and about this late. He wore a plain green t-shirt with brown khakis, sporting a gray fedora and a black umbrella at his side, sunglasses hanging onto his V-neck. He stood as the two foxes approached him. There was always something about the bat he never liked, but he couldn’t put his finger on it just yet.

“Nicholas,” he said with a tip of his fedora, “you’re looking well.” Nick responded with an indifferent nod, putting his hands in his pockets where his right thumb brushed against the flier that activist had given him. He’d throw it away later. Bram motioned the two of them to sit.

“I suspect Finnick has informed you as to why I’ve asked him here?”

“He mentioned it,” Nick’s eyes flashed to the fennec at his side and back at Bram, “briefly.”

“I figured you’d want to tell it to him yourself.” Finnick said.

“That is always preferable.” He held the crook of the umbrella as though it were a cane. Pretentiousness, that was it, Nick decided. “Truth be told I haven’t given you the full details either, Finnick. No offense meant, of course, but one can never be too careful.” If he could bottle his own farts and let them loose for him to smell every so often, he probably would. Nick had to stifle a laugh as he pictured it.

“I’m sure you’re both aware that I am something of a… unique collector.”

“You mean your doll fetish thing?” Nick felt a brush of air go by his leg as Finnick missed it with his foot.

“Yes,” Bram adjusted his shirt, “my… _doll fetish thing_ … To be more accurate, I collect rare, porcelain dolls. Ancient things, made even before all of our collective ages put together.”

“How redundant.”

“Shut up!” Finnick hissed, masked by a mountain lion barista asking if they’d like anything to drink. The two foxes ordered simple coffee, Nick taking his black, the only way he liked it, while Bram politely declined. A shame, watching a bat eat and/or drink was quite a treat to see for how they got around the wing situation, but it looked like it would be nothing but business with this one (yet another reason Nick found to not care for him much).

“Anyway,” Bram turned in his seat to look over the railing, “that is the reason you two are here.”

“Dolls?” Nick asked, tilting his head as Bram continued to scan the crowd below them.

“ _My_ dolls. Stolen from me by the police and sold at an auction to some…” Bram bit his lip and looked like he was about to draw blood before he turned to face the two foxes again, a look of unease hidden behind both their eyes. “I’ll make no secret I’ve done some… shady deeds in my time.”

“Haven’t we all?” Bram ignored Nick.

“It pains me to admit further, but my dolls provided another use outside of their antiquity. They were harmless enough that no one would think twice about them, no one would think there was anything inside their stuffing except lint or cotton balls.”

“And I’m guessing that wasn’t what they were lined with when they got taken from you?”

“A little decorum please…” Finnick whispered as he rubbed his nose.

“Wow, didn’t know you knew that word, a plus.” Nick mumbled back. The barista came back with their coffee, unaware that the time for discrete whisperings had passed.

“Regardless of what was inside them,” Bram surveyed the bottom floor again, “once they had been confiscated and their ‘stuffing’ removed, the dolls were put up for auction, like I said. If my idiot parents had posted my bail fast enough I would have bought them back, but alas, justice is never that kind. Fortunately, the buyer happens to have booked a room in this very hotel.”

“You’re kidding, not the one down the street?” Nick gasped.

“If you doubt me, he’s down there as we speak.” Bram pointed his claw over the railing. The foxes’ eyes followed it and landed on a tall coyote dressed in light overalls and a dress shirt who was busy talking on the phone as a bellhop was carrying what was presumably his luggage behind him.

“That’s the guy,” Finnick asked, “doesn’t look like a doll collector.”

“Yeah, he’s much cleaner.” The fennec had all but abandoned trying to shut him up at this point.

“That’s Salvador Blanc,” Bram explained, “one of the most influential stockbrokers in Zootopia, and another sort of dealer as a hobby.”

“And a doll hoarder?”

“He sold the dolls.”

“Why would he buy the dolls if he was gonna sell them again?” Finnick asked.

“Because he put something in them that was worth more than what he bought them for.”

“Clever.” Nick had to admit.

“I tracked him down, called him demanding my dolls back, but he refused. Not even a small cut of the profit…” his voice trailed off as Salvador disappeared into the elevator.

“So, what, you want us to rough him up, intimidate him into giving you a little compensation?” That Finnick, Nick thought, always jumping at the chance of violence, little scamp.

“No, no, nothing of the sort.” Bram laughed, a dark and foreboding one. “I want you to rob him.”

“Oh yeah, that’s way more reasonable.”

“I presume that Salvador will keep something valuable on his person; credit cards, cash, anything like that. Simply steal his wallet or an item of equal or higher value, and give it to me.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Bram repeated.

“And we don’t have to do anything else with him?”

“Perish the thought.” Nick could see Finnick’s heart sink a little. “It’s the next best thing to my poor dolls.”

“You know which floor he’s on?” The fennec asked, sulking in his chair.

“Sadly, no. He’s paranoid, always has been. He rarely comes out of his room except to talk to the manager, and I believe he has multiple fake rooms around the hotel where he sends his luggage and other items.”

“You can’t just ask the staff what room he’s in?” Nick suggested.

“It’s against their policy to reveal such sensitive information about their guests. Especially when a guest specifically requests such information to remain secret.”

“Really missed your calling as a poet.” Bram continued to ignore Nick as he leaned in closer across the table.

“You find his room, his proper room, bring me back something or things of extreme value, and I’ll pay you both handsomely, with some interest from the stolen goods if you so desire.”

“Sounds good to me.” The fennec had to stand on the edge of his chair to shake the bat’s claw, something Nick would have made a remark towards if he weren’t thinking it over. “Well, what do you say Nick?”

The fox held his chin in his paw, glancing at the elevator where Salvador had disappeared to some unknown part of the hotel. The hardest part would be finding his room, but there were ways to get around that. Everything else would be easy. No more difficult than any other seemingly impossible job he, Finnick, and any other partner he’d had had done. But the risk was still a tremendous one. If they were caught he could kiss his freedom goodbye for at least the next ten years, maybe more. Finnick had already cast his die, never having to deal with anything worse than jail as a reprimand, and now the shoe had been passed to him. He could either place his bet or walk away from the table, back to his apartment, and forget the entire meeting had ever happened. But it all sounded so simple, so by the numbers. How could he possibly pass it up?

“What the heck,” he shrugged and shook Bram’s claw as well, “no guts no glory.” The dice had been thrown, all bets were final. Now he could only hope fate wasn’t as cruel a mistress to him as before.

 

“Nice guy,” Nick said as he and Finnick walked out of the revolving doors to the courtyard of the Palm, “really, I don’t know why we never hung out with him more.”

“Yeah, he’s a charmer,” Finnick said with a small shudder, “but his family’s also filthy stinkin’ rich.”

“Guess they’d have to be for him to have a creepy doll collection in the first place.”

“So,” Finnick almost fell on his back as he looked up at the hotel, “what’s our first move?”

“What, did you stop doing these gigs when I went to _the joint_?”

“Nothing this intricate.”

“Obviously, we gotta start by finding out where our coyote’s holing up.” Nick lowered his voice as a group of tourists took a selfie a few feet from them.

“I know _that_ ,” Finnick snarled into his coffee cup, “but maybe you didn’t notice, it’s a freaking huge hotel, Nick.”

“You should see it from up here.” Nick missed a glare that would have sent him in stitches as his eyes slowly trailed the scale of the Palm, thinking back to past jobs that were even more impossible than this. Then it hit him.

“You remember that art museum with the painting of the wolves playing poker?”

“I remember that was the _least_ butt-ugly painting in that rip off, why?”

“You remember how we found out what room they were keeping that painting in?” Finnick paused, trying to recall.

“You wanna use a drone?”

“Why not,” Nick shrugged, “if he spends most of his time in his room we might be able to spot him through the window.”

“You don’t think a paranoid guy like him might draw the shades?”

“From what, this is the tallest hotel in the district, there’s nobody to spy on him. Probably chose the Palm for how isolated it is.”

“All right, it might be worth a shot,” Finnick finished off the last of his coffee and tossed it in a nearby garbage can. “But where are we supposed to get a drone? The guy who hooked us up last time is out.”

“Why, what happened to him?”

“Nothin’.” Finnick replied a bit too quickly.

“And what happened to his sister?”

“None of your business!” He nodded. Carl was definitely out.

“I think I may know a guy.”

“They still like you?”

“More or less. Haven’t talked to them since before I got thrown in prison.”

“And they have a drone?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Well who is it?” Nick’s eyebrow was erect and his lips shaped in a smirk as he looked down at his partner. Realization slowly creeped on the fennec’s face as he understood.

“Ooooooh, you’re not thinking about-”

“Ooooooh, yeah I am.” Nick gestured with his head and led the way back to the train station. They needed to get to Savannah Central and they had little time in the day to it in. Besides, if Finnick was going to drag him back to prison over this, he could at least get a few more kicks in before the job hit the fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was gonna make this longer but I haven't updated in a while so here ya go (with college classes starting up again updates might be even more infrequent but the story's just starting to get into its groove so I'll try to keep at it).


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